The end of hands-off-Hillary Clinton

Clinton’s name was invoked over and over during the Benghazi hearing. | AP Photo

“Somebody screwed something up, but it wasn’t on purpose,” he added. “But we are getting into Vince Foster territory here… She’s going to be asked about it in the 2016 campaign — okay, that’s fair. But this thing has been investigated and re-investigated. There’s definitely a political aspect to it, but I also wouldn’t rule out the fact that some of these guys are just stone-ass crazy.”

During now-famous testimony before the Senate earlier this year, furious Clinton dismissed the bedrock GOP criticism of the administration’s response to the attack: That they had mistaken a coordinated terrorist attack for a spontaneous demonstration.

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Full account of Benghazi attack

“We had four dead Americans!” she said. “Whether it was attack preplanned by terrorists or it because of a guy out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill Americans … What difference does it make?”

But leading Republicans have long raised the issue of what they believe was an administration attempt, not limited to Clinton or her staff, to whitewash the details of what happened during the chaotic attack in Benghazi.

“It’s been a cover-up from the beginning,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in January.

David Bossie, founder of the conservative advocacy group Citizens United — and a former Congressional investigator who probed the Whitewater scandal in the 1990s — described Mills as “the centerpiece of the Clinton obstruction machine.”

Added Bossie: “Once Cheryl Mills came to light, Cheryl Mills has been the enforcer since the 1990s … this is a woman who has been the leader of the Clinton obstruction machine. That machine that obstructed us meaning Republican investigations, trying to get to the bottom of what the Clintons were doing in the ’90s, she was right there….[it’s a[ telltale sign that this is directly from Hillary Clinton.”

In the aftermath of the hearing, mainstream national Republicans also hammered away at Clinton’s role: America Rising cut a quick web video and the Republican National Committee blasted an email claiming, “Obama & Clinton Benghazi Claims Don’t Pass Sniff Test.”

Staffers with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform say the overriding purpose of the hearing was to call into question an internal administration review of the Benghazi attack and raise questions about the State Department’s sluggish response to the attacks and mixed messages sent by Foggy Bottom and the West Wing in the days that followed.

In his opening statement, Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said he had convened the session to hear out witnesses who would expose “the flaws in the accountability review board’s methodology, process and conclusion..and to make certain our government learns the proper lessons from this tragedy.”

Yet the vigor of GOP congressman pursuing any and every lead that led to Clinton personally to the attack on Wednesday was unmistakable — as party conservatives pelted witnesses with detailed questions about her personal involvement in the incident, a level of scrutiny that rivaled the committees inquiries about decisions made by President Barack Obama and his national security team.